


blurred edges (discoveries)

by WattStalf



Series: cos your love's got the best of me (baby, you're making a fool of me) [1]
Category: Baccano!
Genre: F/M, Suicidal Thoughts, usual lua warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-23 08:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20005150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WattStalf/pseuds/WattStalf
Summary: Nothing in particular interests her, until she starts to think about dying.





	blurred edges (discoveries)

**Author's Note:**

> woo

Nothing ever seemed to drastically change for Lua, to make her feel the way that she did regarding her own life. Nothing ever seemed to change for her at all, so perhaps the reason she felt the way she did was due to boredom.

But that never felt like an accurate motivation either. Really, there was never anything that felt like a proper explanation for why she turned out the way she did, so she could never answer if anyone questioned her on it. She’s glad that Ladd doesn’t question her at all.

~X~

Her parents are normal, her family is normal, she is an only child, and everything seems dull, for as far back as she can remember it. She is a quiet and withdrawn child, and her parents ask her why she never brings any friends home, and she doesn’t have an answer. Everything seems dull to her and she feels detached from the rest of the world, like she’s always just slightly removed from everything that goes on around her. Like the edges are blurred, and the colors are dimmed.

Nothing in particular interests her, until she starts to think about dying, but she would not say any sort of depression or suicidal impulse drove her to develop this fixation. She would have to actually  _ feel _ something to feel depressed, she thinks, and if all she wanted was to commit suicide, she learns early enough how easy that is.

Someone in her family, a distant relative that she met when she was too young to remember it, dies, and she supposes that is her first encounter with the subject. She doesn’t know the person well enough to have any thoughts on the loss, and instead dwells on the subject of death, on the stillness and the lifelessness, and she begins to feel more of a kinship with her deceased relative than she ever has with anyone her own age, or with anyone living, for that matter.

But the differences are there and they are striking. She is young and her family attempts to sugarcoat things for her, and doesn’t allow her much time to look at the body, but she dwells on it, and the differences between it and herself, for weeks after the funeral. What is it like to die? What is it like to be dead? Is it better than how she feels now, or worse, or is there no comparison, because she won’t be able to feel anything at all? She has never wanted to know anything this much; she can’t remember feeling truly  _ curious _ before.

There are a lot of different ways to die, she soon learns. Her relative died of old age, she is told, and she feels somehow relieved to learn that regardless of the life you live, there comes a time when your body refuses to go on. No one can escape death, which means that she will know what it is to die, one way or another. She doesn’t want to imagine a life that never ends.

Old age is a guaranteed way to die, but she grows impatient just thinking about it. Impatience is another feeling that she isn’t used to, and it’s strange. She learns more and more ways that someone can die, that she could die, if they were to happen to her, and eventually, she learns that death is not something she has to wait on. Among all these things that  _ could _ happen to her, there are things that she could do to herself, and experience dying on her own time.

She knows that she could kill herself, but as soon as the idea enters her mind, she banishes it immediately. Yes, she could kill herself, but, as much as she wants to die, she doesn’t want to kill herself. In fact, she isn’t interested in at all when she imagines herself doing it, so no matter how interesting the concept of any sort of death may be, when she adds suicide into the mix, it loses all of its appeal. Which means that she can’t obtain death on her own, which means that she is stuck waiting for it to finally come to her after all.

How terribly boring, she thinks, and it almost seems as though her life has become even more boring as a result. Before, she was detached and bored without waiting for anything; now she is bored  _ because _ she waits, because of the anticipation. She will spend the rest of her life waiting to die, because she cannot kill herself, for reasons beyond her own understanding.

It’s just, for whatever reason, whatever it is that makes death so exciting to her falls away whenever she imagines suicide. Realistically, she knows that the outcome is the same regardless of how she gets there, but perhaps there is something to the excitement of how she will die, that she will be robbed of if she does it all herself. So she continues to wait, not considering the possibility of her own murder until the day she meets Ladd Russo.

This is nearly a decade after her fascination with death has set in, and by now, the world has only grown more dull and distant to her. She ignores the frustration of her family as she continues to do nothing with her life, still making no friends and showing absolutely no interest in men. They probably hope for her to find someone she can tolerate marrying, just to get out of their house.

Lua knows that she’s considered beautiful, and is often approached by that, before her personality and her dead eyes eventually deter any potential suitors. This is, she assumes, why Ladd approaches her, but he is not as easily deterred. The man bores her just as much as anyone else, but nothing she does is enough to get him to leave her alone.

In the end, just when she thinks she’s managed to get rid of him, she hears a commotion, and follows after him. That is where she witnesses him kill another man, and it is the first time she’s witnessed death up close. The first time she has seen someone who is alive turn into someone who is not, and it is at the hands of the man that, only moments before, she thought was unbearably boring.

She’s always known that murder was a way to die, and always hoped that she might somehow end up a victim, but there’s never been any clear way to tell if someone had the potential to become a murderer. Until now, when she sees a murder taking place, and she can just tell that this Ladd Russo has done this before.

That he does this a lot.

She watches him with wonder in her eyes, and the edges of the world seem somehow less blurred now. Ladd somehow seems less distant than he did when he sat directly beside her, trying to get her to join in any of his one sided conversations, and she understands that everything else in her life was leading her up to this moment. She understands that she is ready to grant her family their wish and leave them behind, to follow this man who is capable of giving her the only thing she wants.

And so she opens her mouth, and makes a request.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in my writing updates, please follow my fanfiction twitter @WattStalf  
> I'll follow back so long as you don't post anything hateful!


End file.
